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peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:00 am
peckishmods) wrote in peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:00 am
PECKENPAUGH PROM 2020
A little rain isn't going to stop Peckenpaugh from throwing a party, and oh what a party this one is going to be. The theme Love in the Time of Asteroids is a little open to interpretation, but no matter what definition you're going with, it's sure to be extravagant. Tonight the paths from each House have been enchanted to repel water, the magical archways glittering like starlight even in the early evening sun. Guiding lights to bring students to the center of campus.
A bit before seven, students wearing their formal finest begin to gather outside the auditorium. Crowds pose and cheese for phones and cameras both magical and mundane while they wait for the festivities to begin. Laughter fills the air. Excitement and chatter. At seven sharp, the auditorium doors open with a billowing cloud of cool mist.
The main floor of the auditorium is a Cretaceous wonderland with dense foliage and dino decor, but the upper levels are all stellar beauty: galaxies and nebulas, spinning planets and shooting stars. Even a few UFOs scoot by in the upper levels. Music is already playing when students start to enter, but it turns up as the crowd grows. Before long, the auditorium is full, and the party can really begin.
And once it does, boy, it doesn't stop.
That rumbling isn't just the bass. And teachers are already herding students away from the dance floor before that's become widely apparent. As things really start to shake, Ms. Kwan and Healer Greatheart lead separate groups toward separate exits and find every door they come to locked. Outside, there's raucous sound. Cracking and crumbling, shouts and screams. Within, the floorboards start to creak.
The auditorium floor folds up and breaks like dry tack. Splinters fly as something forces its way out of the depths of the Sorting Path. A geyser of steam billows white clouds into the air, the water below boiling away against something impossibly hot. Beyond the curtain of white hot air something moves. Many things, some tendrils, others formless, writhing and whipping about. Slinging out, grabbing, grasping, pulling.
Down goes Mr. Crockett, Mr. Stirling, Healer Greatheart, all disappeared in a flash. Students and staff alike scramble, fling spells, put up protections, but nowhere is safe in the maelstrom. Vines push floorboards apart, purple flowers forcing their way through cracks in the wall. From above, foam meteors and magic galaxies crash down, pelting people as they try to flee. Those who aren't quick, or who try to play hero, are pulled off their feet, by their waists, gone into the steam. Nothing can stand against the looming shadow, and with each person disappeared the rumbling grows louder. Until it's no rumble, but a deafening roar.
ONE HEART FOR MANY.
"NO!" shrieks a voice that all gathered recognize. You can't see her so much as feel her, filling the auditorium with her presence as a carpet of moss grows over the floor, up the walls, and then, atop that, a thin layer of frost.
ONE HEART FOR MANY, BUG. COME FIGHT FOR THEM.
Pocket is here, at the foot of the steam geyser. Defiant and ready to fight.
And that's the problem, isn't it? That hubris.
The roar that shakes the building is strange, a sound like plastic scraped against plastic. Inorganic, dry, deafening. The ropy creature, that hunger from somewhere else, goes not for the magimagicicada standing before it, but for everyone else in the room. Vines and tendrils and creeping bits of shadow slither up and grab anyone they can reach. Students and staff, pulled fighting into the steam, relentless, inevitable.
Moss and frost rise up to stop what they can. Freeing students being dragged, building walls of ice and lush green to protect those sheltering in corners. There's too much, too many people being taken at once. And Pocket in her frenzy to free as many as she can does not notice the vines until they've crashed down around her.
"Little Sister!" Pouch shouts, coalescing on the scene to claw with freezing hands at vines that simply won't let the party bug go.
She struggles in bright bursts of green earth, boundless energy until she sees that there is no way out. "Find the roots," Pocket pleads, not just to her brother, but to all who remain. "I promise, I'll bring them up. You have to destroy them!"
And with those words, her fight goes out. The party bug disappears into the steam.
The floorboards creak and crack again, and something massive, something horrible, grows up from the Sorting Path. Roots, innumerable, lurch up out of the pit in the floor. Spring up to block pathways and bar doors. Pouch flings frost where he can, protecting those remaining from being pulled away, but there's no stopping what's coming now. The thing that grows up is something out of nightmare, swirling shadow and writhing mass, both alien and instantly recognizable: a massive, malignant maple tree.
It grows. It destroys. Shatters the roof of the auditorium and stretches up, up, up, reaching toward the moon and poisoning the sky with its presence. And as, finally, the night's rain turns to ash in the air each one of you knows: the holler is dying.
The holler is dying if you don't stop this here.
A bit before seven, students wearing their formal finest begin to gather outside the auditorium. Crowds pose and cheese for phones and cameras both magical and mundane while they wait for the festivities to begin. Laughter fills the air. Excitement and chatter. At seven sharp, the auditorium doors open with a billowing cloud of cool mist.
The main floor of the auditorium is a Cretaceous wonderland with dense foliage and dino decor, but the upper levels are all stellar beauty: galaxies and nebulas, spinning planets and shooting stars. Even a few UFOs scoot by in the upper levels. Music is already playing when students start to enter, but it turns up as the crowd grows. Before long, the auditorium is full, and the party can really begin.
And once it does, boy, it doesn't stop.
That rumbling isn't just the bass. And teachers are already herding students away from the dance floor before that's become widely apparent. As things really start to shake, Ms. Kwan and Healer Greatheart lead separate groups toward separate exits and find every door they come to locked. Outside, there's raucous sound. Cracking and crumbling, shouts and screams. Within, the floorboards start to creak.
The auditorium floor folds up and breaks like dry tack. Splinters fly as something forces its way out of the depths of the Sorting Path. A geyser of steam billows white clouds into the air, the water below boiling away against something impossibly hot. Beyond the curtain of white hot air something moves. Many things, some tendrils, others formless, writhing and whipping about. Slinging out, grabbing, grasping, pulling.
Down goes Mr. Crockett, Mr. Stirling, Healer Greatheart, all disappeared in a flash. Students and staff alike scramble, fling spells, put up protections, but nowhere is safe in the maelstrom. Vines push floorboards apart, purple flowers forcing their way through cracks in the wall. From above, foam meteors and magic galaxies crash down, pelting people as they try to flee. Those who aren't quick, or who try to play hero, are pulled off their feet, by their waists, gone into the steam. Nothing can stand against the looming shadow, and with each person disappeared the rumbling grows louder. Until it's no rumble, but a deafening roar.
"NO!" shrieks a voice that all gathered recognize. You can't see her so much as feel her, filling the auditorium with her presence as a carpet of moss grows over the floor, up the walls, and then, atop that, a thin layer of frost.
Pocket is here, at the foot of the steam geyser. Defiant and ready to fight.
And that's the problem, isn't it? That hubris.
The roar that shakes the building is strange, a sound like plastic scraped against plastic. Inorganic, dry, deafening. The ropy creature, that hunger from somewhere else, goes not for the magimagicicada standing before it, but for everyone else in the room. Vines and tendrils and creeping bits of shadow slither up and grab anyone they can reach. Students and staff, pulled fighting into the steam, relentless, inevitable.
Moss and frost rise up to stop what they can. Freeing students being dragged, building walls of ice and lush green to protect those sheltering in corners. There's too much, too many people being taken at once. And Pocket in her frenzy to free as many as she can does not notice the vines until they've crashed down around her.
"Little Sister!" Pouch shouts, coalescing on the scene to claw with freezing hands at vines that simply won't let the party bug go.
She struggles in bright bursts of green earth, boundless energy until she sees that there is no way out. "Find the roots," Pocket pleads, not just to her brother, but to all who remain. "I promise, I'll bring them up. You have to destroy them!"
And with those words, her fight goes out. The party bug disappears into the steam.
The floorboards creak and crack again, and something massive, something horrible, grows up from the Sorting Path. Roots, innumerable, lurch up out of the pit in the floor. Spring up to block pathways and bar doors. Pouch flings frost where he can, protecting those remaining from being pulled away, but there's no stopping what's coming now. The thing that grows up is something out of nightmare, swirling shadow and writhing mass, both alien and instantly recognizable: a massive, malignant maple tree.
It grows. It destroys. Shatters the roof of the auditorium and stretches up, up, up, reaching toward the moon and poisoning the sky with its presence. And as, finally, the night's rain turns to ash in the air each one of you knows: the holler is dying.
The holler is dying if you don't stop this here.